


light it up

by Anonymous



Category: Legion (2010)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:29:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29517423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "To fall," he said in that low, pleasantly hoarse voice, "sacrifices are made."Written for Kink Bingo ~2013.
Relationships: Charlie (Legion)/Michael (Dominion & Legion)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Anonymous Fics





	light it up

Charlie picked her way carefully down the dark, narrow hallway that led to the diner bathroom. The walls seemed to press in towards her shoulders, and the still shadowy threat of nightfall was lying like a blanket over everyone in the building, leaving conversations muffled and nervous between bodies universally aching and hollow with loss.

Charlie? Charlie felt....numb.

She didn't know why she was looking for him. It wasn't as if she could turn to anyone else for conversation. She stayed in that room she faced Bob's brusque concern, Jeep's grasping eyes, Audrey's tear-stained face - Jesus, but she was young - and everyone else's unnerved silence. There was no comfort in that.

The thought that surfaced then, naturally, was _so you're going to_ him _for comfort?_ Charlie pushed it away. This wasn't comfort. She had a right to information, and she had an itch to not sit there and steep in her fear.

One hand pressed to her stomach, she paused in front of the bathroom door and then flattened her hand against the surface, nudged it gingerly open. "Excu - "

The word choked off into a gasp.

"Oh my _go_ \- your - your shoulders...." Her voice wavered. Charlie stared at the muscular plain of his back, then caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror as her eyes flashed up to meet his opaque stare. Her face was a pale smear against the dimness, her hair a tangled mass, mouth open. She looked shocked and roughly-made. "You," she tried again, and again fell silent.

"To fall," he said in that low, pleasantly hoarse voice, "sacrifices are made."

Charlie clutched at the doorknob to support herself, the metal digging into the skin. "Wings," she said flatly. "You had wings."

His eyes pinned hers for another long moment in the mirror, then dropped to the sink again. He was - washing his hands? His shirt lay in a crumpled heap on top of the paper towel dispenser. "One thing you humans got right," he said. His tone was unmistakably dismissive, but Charlie knew about being dismissed and she didn't think this one was aimed at her.

Her mouth was dry, and it was impossible to rein in her imagination. "You did it yourself," she said. It wasn't a question and he didn't respond. The next words escaped on a shocked, shaky sigh of breath. "That must have hurt."

He paused, like somehow she'd surprised him. "It was necessary."

She put out a hand, then clenched it convulsively into a fist and tucked it back against her stomach. "God," she whispered, a creaky and reflexive imprecation. The next second she recognized what she'd said and the blood drained from her face. Stop. Voice thick, she asked, "when did you..."

He shifted his shoulders, not quite a shrug but a reasonable facsimile. She wondered where an angel picked that up. "A day or so."

"How is that possible?" Charlie said. Her nails were digging into her skin. "They look like...almost like scars."

"I am fallen," he said. His voice was clipped, but he didn't seem deliberately standoffish. "But not entirely mortal."

Charlie found herself nodding, mostly out of nerves. She stopped, palms damp and one curved over her belly by habit. "So you're harder to kill," she said, and her voice came out harder than she'd meant it to, almost accusatory.

He paused, eyes still lowered, and the one corner of his mouth almost bent upwards. It wasn't quite a smile, and his focus wasn't broken, but it broke the storm of anger and almost-shame and _should I apologize to an angel?_ inside of Charlie. As if they'd shared a joke. "Yes," he said.

She realized he wasn't looking at the sink after all; his eyes were tracking the small, absent movements of her hand in the mirror, or maybe just staring at her stomach. She tugged the sweater closer around her, anger sparking against defensively - and then failing, deflated, and leaving her empty and scared.

"Michael," she said. Her voice was shaking again.

His eyes came up to meet hers in the mirror immediately, as though she'd given him permission.

Her stomach tightened, and then relaxed. "Why me?" Her tone was bitter, and this time it wasn't an accident.

He turned, finally, to face her. His full attention was daunting, but Charlie forced herself to look him in the eye. "I can give you no satisfactory answer," he said. She didn't know whether that meant _nothing you want to hear_ or _I don't understand either_.

"You're His guy," she said, and the words came out more tired than bitter. "Or you were, anyway. What, doesn't He give you all the answers?"

He didn't lean against the sink - his erect posture and impossible stillness wouldn't allow for anything as casual as that - but he dipped his head, almost in apology, and she could almost believe in infinite mercy, looking into those eyes. Ironic, since these last hours confirmed it didn't exist.

"Clearly not," he said quietly, and it took her a second to remember her question. "As here I am."

A harsh laugh tore out of her chest, and Charlie realized she'd stepped forward. Like she'd tear the answers out of him with her hands, or she'd ask him to share some of that mercy, put her head against a safe shoulder for the first time since her mother still believed in a kind god. "Maybe," she said, choking on the words, "I got picked because He knew I'd screw it up."

"No." Michael was away from the sink in a heartbeat. The swiftness of him still spooked her - her heart in her throat, stunned by his sudden shift in demeanour - but he didn't grab her. He wasn't threatening. He was standing too close, but he'd -- well, he did that. It was hard to miss. He was....warm.

"Charlie," he said quietly, and his voice was so intense, breath almost stirring her eyelashes. Charlie closed her eyes, feeling the sting of tears press against her eyelids. "I believe in you."

She laughed. It sounded like it was cut out of her chest. "You're just saying that."

"No." He almost touched her. She felt the movement, and her eyes fluttered open involuntarily. That look of infinite mercy was impersonal and fading. He watched her like she was a strange new species, messing up his orderly Encyclopaedia.

Charlie had to bite back a laugh that bordered on hysterical. She was used to being a hitch in the road for guys, and equally used to getting run over on their way to a higher purpose.

Then Michael did touch her, warm hard hands at her elbows and then spanning the soft flesh of her upper arms. His heat stung her through the soft sleeves of her shirt. "If I didn't have faith," he whispered, "I would not be here."

"Doesn't faith mean you listen to God?"

"Faith means you love Him," he said. Lessons in theology from a genuine angel, who knew.

"I can barely take care of myself," Charlie breathed. She was bone-tired and the words were hard and stony on her tongue. She wanted to sway forward, rest her forehead on his implacable shoulder. She hadn't trusted him five minutes ago. She still didn't _trust_ him, but maybe that was the thing about humans. They needed something to believe in, the wispy _after-birth_ future she'd clung to was tattered beyond repair, and God was right out.

And that, here and now, left Michael.

"This is only your beginning," he said softly. She gave up and let her head droop against him, shuddering. His hands moved to cup with alien and frightening tendency the back of her skull, fingers combing through her hair. "It is not so hopeless."

"There's an army outside our door," she said, but the bitterness was far away, resigned to his hands.

"Faith," he repeated softly.

Charlie pressed her face into his shoulder. She couldn't worry. All she was in this second was a trembling ball of nerves and resentment, desperate for succour, and he didn't move away. "I'm all out at the moment, Michael. Never was much of the type either way."

His fingers shifted, drawing thin electric lines of sweat-damp contact to her cheeks. He brushed her hair away from her face as though cradling something valuable and infinitely fragile in his hands. "I will protect you," he said. There was nothing impersonal about his voice now. Just low, hard sincerity like her own personal guardian angel.

She could see his shadowed eyes, the austere lines of his face and the absolute surety - something not quite human in the set of his mouth, the way shadows fell across his face. He was a fallen angel, he was nothing human, and there were angels - maybe some of them his brothers or buddies - out there waiting to rip her to shreds.

She kissed him anyway.

He went still as stone. He was a warm, barely breathing statue against her, a figure for devotions and for kissing feet, not for the desperate press of her damp, chapped mouth like a plea for the comfort of sin. Charlie broke away, feeling his breath on her cheek, and an unsteady laugh spilled out. "Was that blasphemy?" she asked, and a flood of anger, fear and poisonous self-loathing tore through her.

She didn't see him move. But she felt his hands on her waist. She felt the rush of air washing over her flushed cheeks, and then the porcelain of the sink under her thighs. And then she opened her eyes again and sucked in a breath because he was leaning close - personal bubble well and truly popped - and his eyes were near-black with a wide-open pupil, deep enough to drown in.

"Charlie," he said, and she was holding onto the not-human-at-all weight of him, hands on the thin stretch of T-shirt.

She didn't understand. If she shouldn't have done it why was he holding her, then, hands on her back and her knees framing his hips? "Sunday school didn't cover this," she said harshly, _tell me what you're thinking_ , but she couldn't let go of him either. She didn't know this man, this being. He knew her.

His forehead touched hers almost gingerly. "No," he said, voice barely above a whisper. "And if it was - I've fallen."

Charlie licked the bruised dryness of her mouth. _Tell me what you want_ , she though, but to herself. And she knew the answer - it just frightened her. Just kindness. She'd settle for some kindness.

When she spoke her voice had a little-girl softness. "So you can kiss me."

He met her stare, and his forehead pressed against hers as his eyes slid shut. She had a split second to wonder if this trumped every other stupid thing she'd ever done in her life.

Then he kissed her, and she knew.

It wasn't like touching somebody human. There was a strange sense of energy, a queer warmth just beneath the surface of his skin - almost a vibration, or static electricity. Her breath came in sharp and ragged, mouth opening against his, and he walled her in with his arms.

She couldn't have described the kiss as experienced, or deft, or familiar. Instead he kissed her with exquisite softness, his mouth against hers a tender, ephemeral caress for long moments. His thumb brushed her jaw and Charlie let her head fall back, let that be their contact. Let herself drown in being touched like something precious, something to be wrapped up and never let down.

Charlie hissed. Another thing they hadn't told her about pregnancy was how wet you could get, how sometimes you were nauseous and cold and couldn't imagine sex and later the smallest thing could make you soaked and wanting, heavy with desire. All at once she was kissing _him_ \- fiercely, sucking his lower lip into her mouth and using her teeth to pin his warm body with her, in her. One of his hands was in her hair, slowly closing into a fist and steadying her urgent movements.

Charlie made a tiny open sound, echoing in the bathroom. Michael leaned away from her to kick the door shut.

And that - it was like the period on the end of a sentence, a closing statement. She found his human, mundane belt and dragged him back to her. He came, he followed the pull of her hands and the sleek swell of muscle at his hip made her gasp like it was her first time, like the touch of skin could still fill her with strange wonder. She kept kissing him greedily -- demanding, and she didn't even know what, just that she needed it almost more than breathing.

But apparently Michael knew.

His hand cupped her, sure and suddenly. Charlie jerked, one hand flying to clamp down on the slippery edge of the sink, the other grasping at his shoulder. She crawled her fingers over his back until she found the rough edge of scar tissue. It kept her on earth. The pleasure almost unseated her - it was nearly too intense, his fingers navigating her clothing, finding her soft and hot and slick beneath them. It was like being touched by a live wire; that strange current of energy lit up her skin and made her cry out, begging as her hips came off the porcelain. Her fingers were white knuckled on the edges of the basin and he gave her long, rhythm strokes with the pads of his fingers then slid two inside. In seconds, she came apart.

When she drifted back to her earth he had her cradled in his arms, and her pulse pounded in her ears and blood-rich throat. She wasn't thinking about violence or the lonely wind-swept desert or the weight of her stomach throbbing in her knees. His breath touched her ear, the softly ragged rhythm of his inhale and exhale drowned out by her panting gasps. She felt...drained. Not the sick, bearing-down kind of exhaustion, but curiously light. Charlie sucked in a deep, calmer breath and closed her eyes. She relaxed, slowly and finally, against the warmth of his body.

"This is only your beginning," he said softly, and for the first time she believed him.


End file.
